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(CIVIL RIGHTS—HARLEM RIOTS.) PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY.
Group of 4 items related to the 1964 Harlem Riots.
Hear Bill Epton; The Frame-
Up (It is Happening Here); A Harlem Mother’s Nightmare; and broadsheet, announcing
the formation of CERGE (Committee to Defend Residence to Ghetto Life. Various pagi-
nations.
SHOULD BE SEEN
.
New York City, 1965
[400/600]
On a hot July day in Harlem in 1964, James Powell, a 15-year-old unarmed black teenager, was
shot by an NYPD patrolman. Witnesses testified that even after the unarmed teenager had fallen to
the ground, officer Gilligan shot him twice more in the back. An internal investigation found Thomas
Gilligan innocent of any wrongdoing. Harlem rose up with one voice, and demanded justice. And
when none came, anger and resentment, festering for decades of police excess exploded into one of the
worst riots in the city’s history. These four items are contemporaneous to the killing and the resulting
riot. Bill Epton was the nominal head of the Progressive Labor Party, representing the teenager’s fam-
ily and the entire neighborhood.
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(CIVIL RIGHTS.) PHOTOGRAPHY.
Group of 22 press wire photographs.
Averaging 8 x 10 inches, with notations or stamps on verso.
Various places, mid to late 1960’s
[600/800]
The 1960’s saw some of the worst race riots in U. S. history since the bloody “Red Summer” of 1919.
In a sad but predictable replay, riots erupted in some of the same cities that had experienced the violence
of 1919. The Civil Rights Struggle, amplified by the assassinations of Malcolm X, the Kennedy
brothers and Martin Luther King Jr, literally lit the country up. In the pre-Internet world, these wire
photos were means of instantly transferring images of the disturbances from one place to another.
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